So Many Years
by Avadedra Hetarra
Summary: Oneshot, Sho's POV. Where did he go? What did he do? And does he still love Kei?


Okay, so it's not Chapter 10, but it's still something. I wrote this... quite a while back, but I've never gotten around to posting it. Quick oneshot, Sho's POV. I know this one's been done before, but I wanted to do it. I suck at names sometimes, which is odd for me, so the OC's have strange names. Oh well. (chuckle)  
Do hope that you like, though. It did have a number title, but the timeline for _Moon Child_ is so weird that I gave up trying to count. If I've mentioned a year in this, please don't get miffed if it's wrong. I did my best. Thanks.

Happy reading!

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**So Many Years**

I wanted to die, Kei. I was ready to die that day. To go out in a blaze of glory, just like you always said I would. Back when I was a reckless kid with a gun on my hip. I was ready to die because I had no one left. And I couldn't bear the thought of making you watch me grow old and die. I knew, too, that if I died, I'd get to be with Yi-Che. We would be together in Heaven, if there were a Heaven. Away from the violence, the guns, the sterile hospital environment. Away from her murderous tumor. Away from you.

You don't know how much it hurt hearing her voice for the first time, experiencing the joy of the melodious sound, then hearing her call me by your name. Part of me was happy when she slipped into that coma. Then, I could pretend. I could hold her hand and believe that it was me she felt, not you. I began to hate you.

Then, you came back. I didn't expect you to, didn't expect you to believe me when I called you. But, I turned around that night and there you were. Cocky bastard. Almost ten years and you hadn't changed one bit. Still, my hate ebbed enough that my love for you flourished again.

As a child, I looked up to you as the absent father that I'd never known. When nii-chan abandoned me, you raised me, taught me to read, to write, to fight. You bought me my first gun, showed me how to use it, took me for my first job. I threw up. You laughed. I told you I hate you. You said, "I know." I threw up again. You carried me home.

When I was a teenager, you became my best friend. You watched my back I watched yours. Not that yours needed watching. You couldn't be killed as I could. Still, it gave me a sense of purpose if I thought I could protect you. You were proud of me, of the man I was becoming. My own brother even grudgingly remarked on one occasion that things could have been worse without you. Growing into an adult, my love for you changed. I couldn't tell how or why, but it did. I always brushed it off though, telling myself I was stupid. Then, we met Son, and through him, Yi-Che. You were the first one she saw. The first one she felt anything for. Even after I met her, fell in love with her, she still watched you, still wanted you. I knew that, stupid as I was, but it didn't stop me. After you left, I kept trying. Finally, I guess she just got tired of me asking.

Then, Hana came along. I thought that things were complete, that life was going to be good. But, there was something missing. You weren't there to be happy for us, with us. You came back to us just in time for the end. Toshi was dead for nine years, Shinji's blood barely wiped from my hands, my crew gunned down in the street, Yi-Che lingering between life and death. All I had was Hana, and I knew, iI knew/i, what kind of person she would become if I raised her alone. I only knew one life, one thing. _The Gun_. Everything that you had taught me, I knew I would teach to her. It was all I knew. I would rather have died than let that happen.

But you… you greedy bastard. You wouldn't let me go like that. Wouldn't let me die the way I lived. You took the last of my human life and forced me into the world that you knew. You did for me what you wouldn't do for my wife, Kei, the woman who loved you first and never loved me. Even as we watched her die, holding her warm hands in our cold ones, you never raised a finger, never tried to help her. You cursed me but refused to put that upon her. You were greedy, but not that greedy.

Once I realized what you'd done, what you'd made me… I fled. Into the dark, into the shadows, knowing now why you were the way you were. I realized that all the things you ever said about yourself, all the times you called yourself a monster, you weren't lying. I felt that hunger, that yearning for blood. I ended up in Tokyo. Or, what was left of it. I established myself as best I could, keeping a low profile, doing what I did best. Killing. Stealing. But, there was something else to do now. Another need that had to be fulfilled. I fed. Just as you had on the men that I killed in my youth, I fed on the men I killed in my cursed life. Every time I did, I hated you more and more. I loathed what you had done and I loathed what I had become. I lived alone for nearly a year before it all changed. It was routine by then, what I was doing. I had lured the man into the dark warehouse. I felt the boy before I saw him. He stood back in the shadows, watching as the drug dealer in my arms slowly stopped fighting, stopped moaning. Stopped living. I thought he'd run, or at least start to scream. But, he didn't. He just stood there, watching. When I'd finally had my fill, I sat up, watching him watching me. He finally came out of the shadows, approaching me with quiet steps.

He reminded me of myself, Kei. He reminded me of the boy that I had been. I remembered with sudden clarity the day I met you. This boy, his hair long and filthy, stood with no emotion, no expression. I asked him the same question you asked me all those years ago.

"Aren't you afraid?"

Like me, he shook his head no.

His name was Yuri. His family was gone, leaving him an orphan. What hit me the hardest was that he was a mute. But, unlike Yi-Che, his was genetic. He would never open his mouth one day to ask why we never smiled, why we never laughed anymore. What drew me were his eyes. Vivid green, an unusual shade for an Asian. But, I was no stranger to that. You told me once that my eyes scared you.

I didn't know my birthday and Shinji couldn't remember it. So, you picked a day. It was my fourteenth birthday and you made a cake. Oh, it was ugly. Broken and lopsided, and slightly burnt. The icing couldn't mask the smell. Still, you lit the candles and Toshi sang to me, just as you taught him to. I blew out the candles, looking up at you happily, only to see you staring at me, wide eyed, with an expression of terror and awe mingling on your face.

"Kei? What's wrong?" my child-like voice asked, snapping you from your reverie.

"Your eyes," you'd said. "They scare the hell out of me."

Then you smiled and ruffled my hair, laughing as I swiped your hand away. Lifting the knife, you cut the cake. It crunched. We didn't eat it. Yuri's eyes, different like mine, held a fire that I knew at once. I did the only thing I could for him. I thought of you in that moment, thought that I wanted to make you proud, to show you that what you had done for a small, orphaned boy all those years ago was appreciated. I took him in, gave him a home, a life. I even sent him to school so he could learn signs, which he taught me. We learned to communicate. One day, he came home with an excited glow in his eyes. He had learned a new sign, a new word, and he wanted to share it with me. He showed it to me, then wrote its meaning on a piece of paper. Showed me again. If I had been able to, I might have cried. The word he signed and wrote on the paper was 'father.' He wanted me to be his father.

He never questioned what I was. He accepted that I could not go out with him during the day, that I wasn't able to go with him to the parks and arcades until after the sun went down. He was patient with me, never questioning why I would disappear for days at a time when the hunger got to be too much for me to sustain any longer. He was fifteen when I found him. When he turned sixteen, I bought him his first gun and began the task of teaching him all that you had taught me. If he was going to survive, he needed to know how. It never crossed my mind that I could just turn him and let him live forever with me, as my son. I'd turned my back on Hana, why would I desert Yuri? Instead, I taught him self-defense. I taught him gun maintenance. I taught him how to fire it. When he was almost seventeen, he made his first kill. He didn't throw up. I forgot about you for a while, Kei. My life was content again. I had a family again. I knew that Yuri was growing up and that soon he'd start to grow away from me, but I refused to let that become a problem. Because I refused to love him. He called me 'father,' but I never called him 'son.' I couldn't. I knew what that kind of love could do in the long run. I always held him at arm's length. I never opened my heart and soul to him.

Kei, what did I do wrong?

When Yuri was eighteen, he met a beautiful young woman. He brought her home one night, proudly introducing me, his father, to her. Her name was Sun-Yee, and her smile was infectious. And Yuri loved her. Loved her with an aching passion that needed no words. She came to the apartment many times and we finally told her our secret. She accepted it gracefully, putting her arms around me in a tender hug of understanding and trust. Yuri almost cried.

They saw each other for two years before he came to me one day. He wanted to marry her. He wanted my blessing, my consent. What else could I do? I couldn't keep him forever. He wasn't mine. Never could be. I wasn't greedy. I gave him my permission, my blessing. They married at night, so I could be there, exchanging vows under the full moon. I thought of you for the first time in many years that night. I wondered then if you were keeping your promise and looking after Hana for me. I realized that I didn't hate you anymore.

Then, I was alone again. Sure, Yuri and Sun-Yee came around to visit now and again, but it became less and less of an occurrence. I stopped feeding, going on one of your "starvation diets." I stopped leaving the apartment, for once realizing that I was completely and utterly alone. I lay on my bed for hours, days, sliding in and out of consciousness, never knowing one second from another. How much time had passed? Weeks? Months? I slowly came out of my stupor when the hunger got to be too much. I went out and survived. I accepted the fact that Yuri was gone, perhaps forever now, and that I still had to live. I came back to Mallepa once. It was dark; the park was wet with a fresh rain, the smell intoxicating. Home. I was home. All the things I'd known in my youth were here, in Mallepa. Then, I saw her. Yi-Che. I froze in my tracks, my breath caught in my tracks.

She was on a scaffold, a yellow apron around her body, paintbrush in her hand. Her black hair was pulled away from her face. She was a perfect image of my wife. I almost called out her name.

"Hana?"

That voice. _Your_ voice. I saw you walk from the shadows of the wall, looking up at her proudly. You hadn't changed at all, except that your hair was longer, shoulder length again. Your smile wasn't changed either, but I noticed it didn't reach your eyes anymore.  
She smiled at you, and suddenly she wasn't Yi-Che anymore. She was Hana, my daughter, my flesh and blood. Suddenly, her eyes cast in my direction and I froze. She blinked in surprise, but before she could make any connections, I fled. I found myself in the warehouse where I had meant to die. It was nearly gone now, but there was still a small room still standing with enough roof that I could shelter for the day. Hana… Yi-Che… my daughter… my wife. The two had become one in the years I had been gone. She didn't need me. She had you, Kei. You had raised her, just as I had made you promise that day. You took care of her. I loved you more fiercely for that.

I went back to Tokyo. There was nothing left in Mallepa for me. I went back to the life I'd created, hating its loneliness and quiet solitude. I knew I'd live this way forever. I opened the door to the apartment and there was Yuri, lying on the kitchen floor, dying. He told me that Sun-Yee was already dead in their home, along with the child she'd been carrying. The local cartel was not happy with our past actions and had opted to take care of him like an offensive bug. He made me promise not to avenge him, swore me to leave, to get out so they couldn't kill me. I promised him, holding him in my arms the way you had held me when I was bleeding to death that day. I thought of you, of what you had done, again.

I offered to let him live, he asked me to let him die. I granted his wish, the wish that had been denied me all those years ago. I held him as he breathed his last; called him my son, told him I loved him. He smiled once, his bright green eyes shining. Then, he was gone. I stayed long enough for his funeral, images of all the others flashing in my mind. Toshi, Shinji, Yi-Che, Son. Everyone I had ever lost. Everyone who had died before my eyes. All gone, beyond my reach, beyond my grasp. All accept you.

I came back to Mallepa. I had to see you. I was tired. I'd lived beyond my years, and you well beyond yours. I watched you and Hana, watched you bid her farewell as she went off to study in school. She almost saw me again, but cast me off like a bad dream. For the best. I knew you sensed me, Kei. You always seemed to know when I was nearby. Just as in my childhood when I would try to creep into your room after a particularly nasty nightmare. I'd always find you wide awake, sitting up and waiting to comfort me. I never asked you how you did it; I just took it for granted. I'd crawl into your waiting arms and dream again, never once asking why.

I stood before the restored mural, staring at it in wonder. Hana painted so much better than her mother had. I suppose I have you to thank for that, don't I? Your tough love kept her going when she thought that I was dead. For the best.

I'm not a child anymore. I'm old, but I'm not. You're so much older than I am, but neither of us can tell. You told me twenty or so years ago that you'd stopped counting your years. You'd laughed, but your heart wasn't in it. Now, we're both tired, ready to go. I drove. I've gotten much better. You doze in the passenger seat, the wind sweeping your hair around your face, the action peeling away the years. My voice finds itself and I begin to sing. It was your lullaby to me when the nightmares came. You sang it in the darkness of your room, your gentle voice easing my childish fears. I sang for you this time, watching you smile from the corner of my eye. It's almost dawn. You hand me an old, wrinkled photograph. Five smiling faces from the past shine out at me, a pale moon hanging in the background. I smile the first real smile I've had in many years. We both smile. I set the picture on the dashboard, and we wait. The sun makes its appearance, making us blink, but we don't move. We're resolved to this. I feel the first tell-tale burns mark my skin.

"Kei," I say softly, taking hold of your hand. "Here comes the sun."


End file.
